Advantages
Over the past 50 years, brazed aluminium plate-fin heat exchangers (BAHXs) have become the preferred type for a variety of specialised and general applications, mainly as a result of unique capabilities in heating and cooling liquids and gases, and boiling and condensing with single and multicomponent streams. Users can benefit from their
- exceptionally small size, weight and footprint which saves installation and space costs,
- very large surface area per unit volume combined with high heat transfer coefficients thus giving an outstanding thermal performance from a small exchanger,
- ability to handle tiny temperature differences between streams thereby reducing compressor power and giving improved reheat,
- ability to accommodate many streams in the same exchanger thus giving greater flexibility in process flow-sheet design and in process integration, and
- small fluid inventory with consequent improvements in control, safety and product quality.